Don’t Wait to See the Whites of Their Eyes

This raises some very serious questions.

An Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near Iranian waters, then vanished as the American ship commanders were preparing to open fire, the top U.S. Navy commander in the area said Monday.

No shots were fired an an Iranian official in Tehran said the incident amounted to “something normal.”

[...]

The three U.S. warships — cruiser USS Port Royal, destroyer USS Hopper and frigate USS Ingraham — were headed into the Persian Gulf through the Straits of Hormuz on what the U.S. Navy called a routine passage inside international waters when they were approached by five small high-speed vessels believed to be from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy.

The Iranians “maneuvered aggressively” in the direction of the U.S. ships, said Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf and is based at nearby Bahrain. The U.S. ship commanders took a series of steps toward firing on the boats, which approached to within 500 yards, but the Iranians suddenly fled back toward their shore, Cosgriff said.

I don’t know if the Iranians were intentionally trying to be provocative or just screwed up.  I don’t really care.  What I want to know is how they were allowed to get within 500 yards of a United States war vessel.  A high speed boat can close the distance of 500 yards in a matter of seconds.  What if they were carrying explosives and were on a suicide mission to blow up a U.S. ship?  What if they were going to drop a torpedo?  The U.S. ships should have opened fire and removed the threat. 

There can only be two reasons for the commanders of those ships to have allowed the speed boats to get so close.

1) The commander and/or the crew were too slow to react to the threat.

2) The rules of engagement prohibited the commander from acting sooner. 

If number 1 is true, then someone needs to be disciplined.  If number 2 is true, then the White House and/or the Pentagon should be hammered for putting our sailors’ lives at risk with such stringent rules of engagement.